Anthony T. Rossi
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Anthony Talamo Rossi (1900-1993) was an Italian immigrant who founded Tropicana Products, a producer of orange juice founded in 1947 in Bradenton, Florida in the United States which grew from 50 employees to over 8,000 in 2004, expanding into multiple product lines and became one of the world's largest producers and marketers of citrus juice.
Mr Rossi was also an early pioneer in the inclusion of Florida's citrus juices in school meals programs. He also became a noted religiously-oriented businessman, making annual pilgrimages back to Sicily where he helped build a church and mission. In the U.S., he endowed the Aurora Foundation, which has funded various Christian programs.
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[edit] Childhood, early career
Anthony Rossi was born in Messina, Italy on the island of Sicily. He had the equivalent of a high school education. He emigrated to the United States when he was 21 years old and educated himself to the point that he became an expert mathematician and mechanical engineer. He drove a taxicab, was a chauffeur for a railroad executive, and ran a small grocery store. His first involvement with the Florida citrus industry was gift boxes he created to be resold by Macy's and Gimbel's department stores in New York City. These products became very popular. Within a few years, the industrious immigrant owned taxicabs, a grocery store, farm, cafeteria, large restaurant, and a citrus packing plant. He saw great potential in the demand in New York for fresh orange juice, and soon he was seeking ways to facilitate a greater supply of the perishable product almost 1000 miles from the orange groves.
[edit] Tropicana
In 1947, Rossi purchased a small orange juice company in western Florida and thus began the Tropicana Products company. Tropicana's early distribution of fresh orange juice was by way of hand-delivered juice jars to nearby homes, but demand grew, especially in New York City. In what came to be his trademark business style, he approached the challenge at each step of the process: product, transportation, packaging, etc.
A major breakthrough came in 1954, when Rossi invented and patented a pasteurization process to aseptically pack pure chilled juice in glass bottles, allowing it to be shipped and stored without refrigeration. For the first time, it was possible to offer the consumers over a widespread area the fresh taste of orange juice made from 100-percent fruit. Soon thereafter, he also devised a method of freezing pure whole citrus juice in 20-gallon blocks for storage and shipping.
By 1957, a ship, S.S. Tropicana was taking 1.5 million gallons of juice from Florida to New York each week. In 1970, a mile-long Tropicana Juice Train originating on the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad began carrying one million gallons of juice with one weekly round-trip from Florida to Kearny, New Jersey (in the New York City area). Within a short time, additional weekly trips were required to meet growing demand.
In 1978, Rossi sold Tropicana to Beatrice Foods and retired. There have been more than a few changes over the years. Tropicana, has been through a number of corporate changes and since 1998, is now a division of PepsiCo. It has become the world's leading producer of branded fruit juices.
[edit] Religion
Mr. Rossi also became a very religious man. Beginning in 1952, he made annual trips back to Sicily. At Messina, in 1966, he helped fund a church and mission there. In the United States, he established the Aurora Foundation, which has funded Christian educational institutions, Christian missions and other charities.
[edit] Legacy
Rossi was inducted into to the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1987. In addition to his work with product development at Tropicana, his efforts to introduce citrus products into school food programs has also been lauded.
Anthony T. Rossi died in 1993.
[edit] Further reading
- Sanna Barlow Rossi, 1986. Anthony T. Rossi, Christian and Entrepreneur: The Story of the Founder of Tropicana (InterVarsity Press). (ISBN 0-8308-4999-8)
- McPhee, John, 1967. Oranges.
